...two adults and... wow this gets complicated: One employed kid, one 4th year college kid, one Marine, and one college freshman.

Saturday, September 11, 2004

Three Years Ago Today

A prayer for all those who lost their friends and loved ones on 11 September 2001.

Three years ago, Ian was working at the Associated Press in Washington DC. The story unfurled when Ian called and told me to turn on the TV after the first plane had impaled the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. I remember telling him right then that it was no accident. Someone had intentionally caused this heartache. As we spoke, the nation exploded when South Tower was hit, followed by the Pentagon. Another plane went down and no one knew if it was part of the disaster or a coincidental disaster all its own.Later we would learn that United Flight 93 was part of the attack, only something got in the way and it crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. We learned that it was most likely headed towards Washington, possibly aimed at the Capitol. The Capitol is only a few blocks from the AP office. The plane went down killing all the passengers on board. It hit nothing and no one.It was later that day I learned my uncle was on that plane that crashed in Shanksville. My dad's sister had married a wonderful man and they have two amazing kids. My aunt has persevered through pain I can only imagine and my cousins have thrived through their loss.Over the following days and weeks the pieces came together through cell phone calls from Flight 93, how the passengers knew what happened on the ground and how they decided to do something, anything. No one will ever know what really occurred, but we do know the plane did not go where it was intended.My uncle was on that plane, the plane that was headed for where my husband was on 11 September 2001. Amid the losses that day, there were miracles and I consider his presence there, his knowledge as a pilot, and the strength of all those passengers to be a miracle for our family.Through their sacrifice my husband came home.We miss you, Don.

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The GlobeHoppers

For those wondering, Baghdad is 7 hours ahead of EDT.

We're a Foreign Service family currently posted to Frankfurt, Germany after having spent 2 years in Manila, Philippines, 1 year in Lome', Togo (no, not Tonga), 3 years in Chennai, India, 3 years in Virginia, and 4 years in Amman, Jordan. We'll spend 3 years in Germany to graduate the boys from high school, and our next post is Baghdad 2019!

I am a former Army brat (lived in Belgium, Zaire, Algeria, Niger, visited too many places to list), now Foreign Service spouse. I tag along where ever Ian takes us and try to keep the family sane. Between 1996 when we got married and 2003 when we moved to Manila we lived in Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, and Florida, and visited several other states.

Back to London again - November 2015 (grandma came too for the Dr. Who Festival)

South Ari Atoll, Maldives - May 20th Anniversary Trip 2016

Copenhagen, Denmark - March 2017

Antananarivo, Madagascar - March 2017

Johannesburg & Pretoria SA - March 2017

Berlin - May 21st Anniversary Trip 2017

Copenhagen (again) - October 2017 (with a lunch in Sweden)

Bruges - January 2018 (Christmas present!)

Wroclaw, Poland - October 2018

Copenhagen (again) - March 2019 (with an escape room in Sweden)

Rebecca traveled to Oman with chorus (2013), Ethiopia with Week Without Walls (WWW 2014), Qatar with swimming (2014) and volleyball (2015), and Kuwait with basketball (2016). She also went to Amsterdam in 2017 for a weekend.

Rebecca and Nicholas traveled through Vietnam on WWW 2015 and Thailand for WWW 2016.

Katherine went to Kuwait with volleyball (2014) and France with WWW 2014, and did a semester abroad in Cork, Ireland in 2016. She's was in Dublin for her internship summer 2017.

Jonathon went to Kuwait with Academic Games (2015) and had a school trip to Berlin (2016). He had a week of canoeing in Sweden in summer 2017, and a week of snowboarding in Austria in 2018.

Ian has been to Ethiopia (2006), Benin (2006), South Korea (2004), Liberia (2016), Central African Republic (2016), Cameroon (2016), Algeria (2017), Morocco (2017), Tunisia (2017), Turkmenistan (2017), Suriname (2018), Brunei (2018), Auckland NZ (2018). He also covers Sanaa and Tripoli (no travel there), Copenhagen and Accra. Ian aided after the Mumbai Massacre (2008), and also went to Bangalore and Hyderabad in India. A life goal for him is to serve in Russia or Canada, or really any place that has a decent hockey scene. He's happy that Frankfurt has the local Loewen team!